By all accounts, today was a good day for Facebook. The company beat Wall Street estimates with its latest earnings report, and looks set to expand aggressively over the next year — maybe even reaching 2 billion users in 2017.
A major part of Facebook’s plans to nab more users is to bring connectivity to more parts of the world — including emerging markets. One way it’s doing this is through Internet.org: an initiative that sees Facebook pair up with local cellular networks to give mobile users access to select websites using a data-free app.
Despite some stumbling blocks this year (including a ban on the service in India over net neutrality concerns and a costly failed satellite launch), Internet.org is finding its footing. During its earnings call, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the free internet program is now helping 40 million people get online around the globe.
It may not seem as impressive as some of the other figures Facebook announced on Wednesday, but one cannot ignore the initiative’s staggering growth rate, especially when you consider that in 2014 it boasted just 3 million users. A year ago that number grew to 15 million, and then in May it reached 25 million. Overall, the program has witnessed growth of 166 percent year over year, reports TechCrunch.
It helps that Facebook managed to sidestep the net neutrality issue in India by working with the government to introduce paid Wi-Fi hubs. Zuckerberg also previously stated that the SpaceX rocket explosion, which resulted in the destruction of Facebook’s Atmos-6 satellite, would not deter it from its plans to further expand Internet.org into Sub-Saharan Africa.
At last count, Internet.org was available in 49 countries, with rumors surfacing that Facebook is also planning to launch the service in the U.S. With mobile ad dollars currently its biggest source of revenue, it’s likely — with the help of Internet.org — that Facebook will continue to rake in cash from advertisers for the foreseeable future.
Discord is trying to push more visibility on the internet for some of its biggest communities, and there's a good chance your messages could end up in a Google Search. The platform is preparing to make conversations from certain public servers searchable on the web, so there's a privacy setting you might want to check before the rollout begins.
According to Discord's official announcement, the changes will roll out in two stages. Starting November 16, qualifying servers will have public web pages featuring automated summaries of conversations. By mid-December, individual messages from eligible public channels could also appear word-for-word in Google and other search engines.
You just opened X and started typing your thoughts. Imagine the jump scare when a hand suddenly pops up on your screen, pointing at the promote button. It doesn’t say a word and simply points. For a growing number of X users, this isn’t a made-up scenario but something they have been seeing since yesterday, and very few of them are amused.
Most of us have learned to tune out the usual in-app upsells, whether it’s a glowing upgrade banner or a pop-up about a premium plan. A floating hand hovering over your draft is much harder to ignore, and that’s probably the whole point.
Scroll through any app for five minutes, and you’ll find someone maxxing something. Their skin, their sleep, their protein intake, even their Friday night on the couch. That little suffix has been everywhere this year, and now it has a trophy to show for it. In a recent announcement, Dictionary.com named maxxing its 2026 Word of the Year.
What are people actually doing when they’re maxxing?